David A. Brenner

David Brenner is the vice chancellor for health sciences at UC San Diego. As a distinguished physician-scientist, he serves as dean of the UC San Diego School of Medicine, leads the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, UCSD Medical Center, and UCSD Medical Group. He oversees more than 900 faculty physicians, pharmacists, and scientists; 7,500 staff; over 600 medical and pharmacy students, and a health system that cares for approximately 125,000 patients annually.

Brenner is a leader in the field of gastroenterological research, specializing in diseases of the liver. He is widely respected as a translational scientist whose work bridges the laboratory and clinic. His research has focused on the molecular pathogenesis of fibrotic liver disease and the genetic basis of liver disorders, and he is recognized as an outstanding clinician and teacher. He was the Editor-in-Chief of Gastroenterology, the premier journal in the field, for five years.

Brenner was recruited to UC San Diego from the Columbia University Medical Center College of Physicians and Surgeons, where he was the Samuel Bard Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine from 2003-2007, a member of the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center, a member of the Columbia University Institute of Nutrition, and Physician-in-Chief of New York Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia.

He earned his M.D. from the Yale University School of Medicine. After completing his residency at Yale-New Haven Medical Center, Brenner served as a research associate in the Genetics and Biochemistry Branch of the National Institute of Arthritis, Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Diseases of the National Institutes of Health.

Brenner first joined UC San Diego in 1985 as a gastroenterology fellow, later joining the medical school faculty, and serving as a physician at the Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System. He also served as a Pew Scholar in the biomedical sciences, a clinical investigator in the VA system, and as a professor and chief of the Division of Digestive Diseases and Nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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